Empty lot snow

This snowy empty lot is on the corner of Ellerdale and Harley down in Westhaven where I go to get lunch sometimes. It used to be a condo building but the city tore it down last year leaving an empty lot. One would image new housing going up here, although I hope it is turned into a park for people to sit... at the end of Harley is the filed where I paint frequently, people set chairs up there and sit because there is no park in this neighborhood. The closest park is Coffee park across the train tracks. The brick colour was raw sienna (PBr7). After trying a whole bunch of yellow ochres and raw siennas, the one by Daniel Smith turned out to be the best for me. Since using it a lot in Brazil, I kept it on my palette and use it all the time now. 

Empty lot snow, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, March 2026 

Digital art yellow and warm colours

Recently the wise Premier of Ontario was criticizing basket weaving, but in fact, basket weaving can be very lucrative. An indigenous artist makes artisanal baskets and sells them for up to thousands of dollars, and actively teaches courses to others on how to weave baskets from traditional knowledge. You can read the CBC article here. This digital art resembles a peanut woven out of colourful strands. 

Basket weaving peanut, 800 x 1000 digital Sketchbook app

Working from a black background, this sketch uses very bright primary colours and basic shapes to create a sort of 'flag' with creepy eyes. Texture is created with a chalk-pastel brush. All of these are done with the Sketchbook app on Android. You can also get it on i-phone. 

Primary colours and shapes, 800 x 1000 digital Sketchbook app

Another fluorescent-on-black sketch, this one only uses yellow, and the background is actually a very dark blue. Its like an angry spirit flying down from the top of a hill. In Japan they had a festival going on where they walked with giant torches to draw evil spirits from the mountains. 

Angry spirit, 800 x 1000 digital Sketchbook app

Dark yellow can look green, a kind of olive green as you see in the painting. That cream-colour is also yellow, but a low chroma variation. On the app, you can easily select hue, chroma, and value at the touch of a finger. Knowing what those words mean also helps. Hue is the 'colour' as you might think of it... red, yellow, blue etc. Chroma is the intensity... bright versus dull. Value is the light/darkness... how close to white or black the colour is. I remember hiding my initials in this one, but cant see it right now, in the top left somewhere. 

Variations of yellow patterns, 800 x 1000 digital Sketchbook app

 

Another exploration of yellow, with some maroon and green accents. I figured out how to make the equivalent of yellow-ochre, its a medium chroma, medium value, orange-yellow.  These digital sketches are kind of fun. The previous one I did while waiting in the dentist office a few weeks ago. 

Droopy flower, 800 x 1000 digital Sketchbook app

Digital art cool colours

Last month I started using an Android app called Sketchbook, by Sketchbook Inc. Its a very powerful app for making art, with a wide range of tools available in the free version. A premium version apparently has even more goodies but I am still just scratching the surface of what the free app does. The neat thing is that you can make colours not possible with real paint, for example the bright magenta (pink) dots, and the cyan lines are only possible on a computer screen. 

Large initials in cyan, 800 x 1000 digital Sketchbook app

I make each image 800 x 1000 to fit perfectly on social media (Instagram and Facebook), same with my watercolour paintings which are 8 x 10 " or 6 x 7.5" which works out to the same aspect ratio. This sketch is like a hail storm behind a window with bars. 

Ice window bars, 800 x 1000 digital Sketchbook app

I accidentally rotated this one and it looked even better this way. To start, I changed the background into cyan, then draw over the other elements using a variety of brushes. I use a lot of the chalk pastel brush, it gives a great crumbly texture. 

Leaves and eyes, 800 x 1000 digital Sketchbook app

Thee is also a synthetic acrylic and oil paint brush... each brush stroke runs out of 'paint' and blends with the other colours in a realistic way. Since you use your finger to make these digital sketches, it feels a lot like finger-painting in early elementary school which I remember well. It was back in Lachine as a young child, a friend of ours, the Toddles drove us there, and there were tables set up in long rows and I was placed at a station with paper and finger paints... I recall using pale blue, and the paper had a smooth texture and off white colour, it was probably craft paper. 

Paint over symbols, 800 x 1000 digital Sketchbook app

I did this one today, after realizing that I could scroll down and find like another three-dozen paint tools including texture-washes and splatter effects. A few finger swipes and I had this graffiti-inspired psychedelic creation. Having a good knowledge of colour theory helps a lot to navigate all the possibilities. I also have extensive practice as a doodler, and have created doodle paintings, although none this year. An example from 2024 can be found here. 

Symbol texture splashes, 800 x 1000 digital Sketchbook app

Synthetic Earth

Holbein company had a line of watercolour paint called Irodori Antique, but recently they discontinued and replaced it with a similar line of gauche-like paints. Avenue des arts put their Irodori stock in a bin and I picked up a tube of russet brown. Like most paint names, its an ill-defined concept, but you can think of russet brown like 'leather jacket' brown. Its almost exactly what you would expect when you think of brown as a colour. To understand it a bit better, I put some of the russet brown on the top left of this painting, and then completed the scene with a variety of other browns and on the bottom, synthetic red-orange, magenta, and red. Russet brown was closest to Caput Mortuum, which you see in the tree and roots structure on the right side of the painting. Caput Mortuum translates to 'dead head' because legend has it that they used to grind up Egyptian mummies into a brown powder to make brown paint! Its an unlikely tale, but makes for a good yarn none the less. In fact, virtually all paints now are synthetic, even the ones sold as earth or natural. Small companies may still use artisanal pigments, for example some of the paints from Stone Ground paints, a Canadian company, might have been authentic. You can see my example of their earth paints in the Armenia painting from the World Inspired Landscape series. 

Synthetic Earth, watercolour 9 x 6" watercolour paper, March 2026 

Canal snow ice and graffiti

The Lachine canal is still mostly frozen with fresh snow cover. The commuter train (REM) runs along with bridge at the top, while cars and pedestrians use the bridge at the bottom. There used to be a tunnel running underneath but its been blocked off for a long time. To make the shadow colour I mix variations of dark green (PBk31), blue (PB60), magenta (PV55) and blue-green (PG7). Its done wet-in-wet to create a feathering effect. 

Bridges snow shadow, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, March 2026

At one of the locks, an overflow river meanders down a short waterfall. Yellow buoys are there to stop watercraft from getting near when the ice thaws and people start using the canal again. It was the first time I could practice painting water again after a long winter. Its officially Spring now, so lets go!

Yellow buoys open water, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, March 2026

Graffiti artists turned the walls of the Lachine canal into an open air gallery. This was a ZONEK piece but I changed it to PJD2026 instead. In the background, you see some of the never-ending condos that pop up along the canal. Its st Henri over there, and I am technically standing in Verdun. 

Frozen canal graffiti, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, March 2026 

Water was flowing down Courcelle street in st Henri. In the background, are trees that grow along the outside of the train tracks, and some community housing is shown on the right. I liked the overall brown and grey look, with pops of blue from the sky, and red from the building cladding. 

Thaw Courcelle street, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, March 2026 

In the foreground there was the remnants of an old wall from the factory that used to manufacture wiring. The wall was once stone, but concrete was poured on, then the graffiti artists got to it. Heavily textured, it made for an interesting effect. When the weather improves I have to go back and do a proper painting of it. Anyways, you get the idea. 

What the heck? watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, March 2026  

 

 

Ghosts pigeons and dumpsters downtown

Phillips square, across from the bay, is at the center of downtown Montreal. Since the Bay closed, its iconic yellow sign was recently removed, leaving a ghostly impression which you see in this painting. I tried to get some of the details of the brickwork and plaster features on its elaborate facade. Tourists and pigeons were all over the square. 

Ghost of the Bay, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, March 2026

With some snow still remaining, these pigeons were having fun looking for food. There must have been a hundred of them. In the background was a Burger King restaurant which I renamed Burger PJD26, although Burger Pete would have sounded better!

Pigeons Burger Pete, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, March 2026

Riding past the alley and I could not resit painting all the dumpsters and other colourful accents including the Olympic rings on top of a building up in the background. A mural adorned the left side, and a few more pigeons mulled about for bits and bites. 

Dumpster alley, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, March 2026 

Sleet Provigo traffic

Sleet is a combination of rain and snow, and it was coming down today. I found a ledge to stand under on Sherbrooke on the way back from the office, and made a painting of the Provigo grocery store on the corner of Cavendish, along with traffic in the foreground. Pops of yellow, orange, red, green, blue and turquoise could be seen on the vehicles including a city bus, and car lights reflecting on the wet road. It would have been nice to make more paintings but I had to chicken out due to the steady sleet. Speaking of chicken, I kept smelling rotisserie chicken while standing here, there must be a shop nearby. Montreal is ranked the number one rotisserie chicken city in North America, along with our poutine. 

Sleet Provigo traffic, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, March 2026